Fender Acoustasonic Exotic Ziricote
Looks are all this guitar has going for it
Yes I am taking another kick at the Acoustasonic can. Let me explain why. It’s all about a (temporary) price drop. Does a lower price make this guitar more of a buy?
Honestly, my experience has been that the Acoustasonics make vaguely adequate acoustic tones and underwhelming and limited electric tones. In the US made options, there was the wallpaper on wood versions and then the “exotics” that had real wood in the tops, although it still remains unclear if this real wood is a slab or just a veneer. A veneer is technically solid wood, but there is a big difference between veneer over something else, versus a slab of wood of greater than paper thickness. When I say wallpaper, what I mean is a laser printed coloured top that is glued to the wood top to give the buyer options for different coloured versions. Glued coloured paper is fairly called wallpaper. It looks like it is worth exactly what it is. Cheap and ugly.
I’ve tried several of the wallpaper topped units and more recently the Cocobolo topped version. The exotics sound better fully acoustically to my ear, but that is likely due to the limba bodies (white limba for the Cocobolo, black limba for the Ziricote). Plugged in to my AER acoustic amp, I could not hear a difference at all and plugged into my Twin Reverb for the electric options, it sounded like a bad Telecaster. Not bad like ZZ Top Nationwide bad, bad like in piece of crap.
Pricing Delusion
Part of my disappointment has been the pricing of these instruments. At $2559 for the wallpaper tops, the guitar is overpriced by $1800 as far as I am concerned. The exotics at $4299 are priced at a level that only someone on LSD could ever consider. Over Boxing Week prices dropped to $2047 and $3439 respectively but as of January first 2022, prices went back to the regular MAP pricing. In late 2021 Fender announced the Player Acoustasonic Telecaster at $1539 which are made in Mexico versions of the wallpaper American builds without the built in rechargeable battery (a good thing) and the removal of the body pickup (a bad thing, even though Fender/Fishman only made it available in a single position on the American built models). I know that Fender Mexico builds are typically excellent, but the price for the new ones should be around $600 for what you get. As for reverting the pricing on the USA made ones, it just ensures that Fender dealers are stuck with overpriced inventory that does not sell until Fender either takes them back or rebates the retailer so they can sell them at an acceptable price point and get them out of aging inventory. Based on the number of review of the American Jazzmaster Acoustasonic, you would think that they things sold like mad. The only people I have encountered who actually own an Acoustasonic, got it through some kind of influencer, sponsorship thing. Employees in guitar stores say nothing about these instruments. Most of them actually choose not to comment, which to me speaks volumes. I’ve never encountered anyone who actually paid their own money for one, except for store owners who had to buy some to get the inventory of Strats and Teles that they actually wanted.
Fit, Finish and Playability
The Ziricote looks great in photos. In real life, it’s much less impressive. Despite rich figuring in the top whatever it is, the finish is a matte satin that does nothing for the figuring in the top or even in the black limba body. The neck still feels like it missed several sanding steps in finishing. There’s certainly been no pore filler used. The factory strings suck eggs and the discoloured fretwork looks corroded and does not feel as smooth as it should. The ebony fingerboard leverages real ebony with a lot of lovely figuring but the finishing feels cheap and incomplete. I spent a reasonable amount of time waxing and polishing the back of the neck to try to smooth things out and make it less sticky. I also waxed and polished the body because it also feels like it missed the entire finish sanding sequence and that ugly matte finish has a texture to it that is quite unpleasant. I do understand that matte is fashionable this week, but with good fortune that idiocy will go away in a short time. Matte finishes to me say cheap and too lazy to do a proper finish. It also conceals flaws in the wood better. Anyone who has ever studied any kind of woodworking knows this. I’m not asking for 60 coats of shellac French polished, even a proper sanding and a gloss poly would be better than the crappy finish that the guitar has.
Amplified and Recorded
Acoustically, the Ziricote top sounds to my ear a bit brighter than the Cocobolo did and better than the wallpaper topped versions, because they sound like cardboard. Playing any of these guitars acoustically sounds a lot like playing a $99 Amazon plywood and cardboard guitar and no one is going to be excited, let alone blown away by these instruments. Plugged in, and with hours spent tweaking knobs, at best it sounds meh. I have played far better sounding and playing laminate guitars from the Far East. The different “body” sounds are very close together so if you are expecting big variances, you will not find them. I spent most all of the time on the acoustic sounds as it took less than a minute to confirm that the electric sounds are still horrible.
Running the guitar into a DI box and then into the Apollo results in a recorded sound that is like what I get from the AER only needing more work. Taking the DI out from the AER to the Apollo will save work recording, but it’s still bland. Despite investing a lot of time challenging my past perceptions, I still come away asking “what’s the point?” Fender’s video demos are certainly impressive, because of the players not the instruments and I wonder how much better those players would sound with a real acoustic guitar.
But what if you want a single guitar for coffee house gigs or small clubs. Presuming that carrying an amplifier and getting it miked up is more than you want, or if you are a singer as well and are using a small PA, ostensibly you should be able to run the guitar direct to the PA via a HiZ input. Except it doesn’t sound very good. You can achieve a decent enough tone by spending some coin on a standalone acoustic preamp/DI box. I tried a Fishman Aura Spectrum that has been gathering dust and it still sounds like yuck, but that is consistent with the Aura in general. I did get a decent enough tone using a Tech21 Acoustic Fly Rig with much tweaking of knobs, adding boost and compression as well as some reverb. I struggle with having to spend hundreds of dollars in addition to the guitar to get a decent PA sound out of the instrument. And unless you plan on carrying an ABY box and an electric amp preamp pedal as well, you can forget decent electric tones from position one which is the “Telecaster sound”. Too much money and too much work for too little in deliverables.
The pickups remain the same. A Fishman designed system consisting of an under saddle piezo (turns head and spits on ground), a Telecaster like bridge pickup and a body pickup that is only available in one switch position with a single blend setting. There is a volume control, a blend control and a five way switch. Fender’s self acclaimed waterfall sound hole delivers a very limited sound, with little bass and little high end. Seriously if you want an amplified acoustic, you could save a lot of money with a China made laminate acoustic with a piezo pickup and get the same kind of tone. If the playability of the Acoustasonics was great, that could justify a price delta, but the playability of the guitars is pretty horrible.
Sample Clips
In this section, I plugged the guitar direct into the Apollo with nothing between the guitar and the interface. I used a Neve 1084 preamp in the UNISON slot because I thought it gave the best sound to the guitar. The acoustic sections have a UA 1176LN using the Easy Guitar preset added in post production. The electric sections use a Waves implementation of a Fender Silver Face Twin Reverb miked on axis with a Shure SM57 and a Royer 121 set about one foot away to reduce the proximity effect and add some openness. The amp simulation had its power amp section active using the 6L6 configuration and also had spring reverb turned on with the mix level turned down. The EQ section is active with all the knobs at noon. It is a very close sound to the Acoustasonic plugged direct into my Blackface Twin. In order to maximize the tonal differences of the guitar, the blend knobs were set to no mix for each of the body / pickup settings. You can hear a much bigger difference in the recordings than you can live.
The sound clips are in order;
Position 5A (closest to the neck) Rosewood Dreadnought
Position 5B Rosewood Auditorium
Position 4A Maple Parlour
Position 4B Mahogany Dreadnought
Position 3A Brazilian Rosewood Dreadnought
Position 3B Brazilian Rosewood Dreadnought with Body Pickup
Position 2A Mahogany Dreadnought (same as 4B - no idea why the duplication)
Position 2B Mahogany Dreadnought Plus Telecaster Bridge
Position 1A Telecaster Bridge Clean
Position 1B Telecaster Bridge Mild OD
No other effects were added. I used a Neve 1084 while recording because without it, the guitar sounds a bit dead. I used the 1176LN compressor/limiter for the acoustic portions because it improved the overall tone and levelled out the peaks. For the Position 1 settings, I wanted to show that this is an electric setup and so added a Fender amplifier while removing the 1176LN. You may not like my choices and that is fair. Feel free to buy the guitar and make your own choices.
My Opinion Has Not Changed
In the end, having tried at length multiple iterations of the Fender Acoustasonic guitars, my conclusions remain the same. They are not good players. They sound equivalent to a cheap China built laminate on their best days. The pickup system is disappointing. The pricing was set by people with no clue as to value who are likely in need of a detox for whatever hallucinogens made them think that the pricing was good. The only place you see positive reviews of these is in places dependent on Fender advertising dollars. Guitar shops don’t want them, they had to buy them as part of their dealer agreement. That’s not uncommon, often a dealer has to buy stuff they don’t want to get stock of what they do want.
If the Acoustasonic Ziricote was under $1000 CAD, I might consider picking one up as a guitar improvement project. At any price higher, my answer remains a no f*cking way. It’s gone back to the store. Barring a massive rebate to the dealer from Fender or Fender being willing to take the thing back, I expect to see it hanging there Christmas 2022. If that massive rebate happens and drops the Ziricote to $999 CAD, I might consider it, but only then.
Thanks for reading. If you questions or thoughts on the Acoustasonic, please feel free to send them along by clicking this link. Until next time, peace.
